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ators Frye and Gallinger had asked for carefully guarded, conservative subventions of from a maximum of three million to nine million dollars a year for the gradual, orderly, wholesome development of American shipping in high class steamers of particular value as transports and naval auxiliaries. Under the iron necessity of war, President Wilson and his Shipping Board have expended a gigantic sum of about three billion dollars for the emergency creation of a merchant marine. With war wages, war cost of material, and the compulsory employment of new labor, untrained and unskilled, ships which could have been built for less than $70 a ton in 1900-1912 now stand on the Shipping Board books at from $200 to $225 a ton. Fully one-half

and probably more than one-half of the three billion dollars expenditure of the Board has been nothing less than a subsidy, appropriated by Democratic Congresses at the direction of a Democratic President. Most, if not all, of this forced subvention could have been saved if the legislation so wisely and patriotically urged by Senator Frye and Senator Gallinger years before had been enacted.

Under all the circumstances it is devoutly to be hoped that when Secretary Daniels rises at the next Democratic banquet he will not proceed to throw stones at the Republican record on the merchant marine. There are altogether too many shining Democratic windows that may be broken.

FREE TRADE IN ARGUMENT AND REALITY.
By Roland Ringwalt.

When the term "free trade" was coined the sound thereof appealed to many who were not sure of the meaning. It has been employed in different senses, and, even now, it bears contradictory significations. There are a few radicals who wish to see a commerce unregulated by custom houses, and who would sweep away all duties whatever. In its general acceptation the term "free trade" refers rather to any tariff antagonistic to the principle of protection. What caption best fits a tariff like our own, in the main anti-protective, here and there regardful of special interests, openly favorable to the dyestuff industry, and positively hostile to revenue raising-what kind

of fish, fowl or red herring our present tariff may be is not easy to say.

This, however, can and should be said. For many years the protectionists have had good cause to wonder at the verbal skill of their opponents. "Law," said that not over-scrupulous attorney, Aaron Burr, "is whatever is boldly asserted and plausibly maintained." In college halls, in editorial columns, in public speeches, claims have been made in a striking manner, and graceful rhetoric has backed up the claims. Not once have these sounding phrases been attested by fact, yet many readers and hearers have been so hypnotized that they did not look at the facts.

"Farmin' and filosofy," says one of

Burnand's characters, "both begin with a f." "Free trade" sounded as if it meant "freedom," "free soil," "free schools," and other things progressive. To this hour there are mortals who believe that free trade wrought emancipation, although the West Indian slaves were freed long before Peel deserted his old support ers, and the slaves of this country were not freed until a protectionist administration was in power. Free trade professors make vague claims of an ethical nature, and these claims are conceded by young men who have never read how the British farmers were tricked into favoring the measure that proved their undoing. Writers who like to be called "broad" or "comprehensive" will say that British trade expanded after the tariff walls were razed, and omit two points first that portions of the walls were taken down with due regard for special interests, and second that enormous sums of gold came in from Australia. Many half facts or approximations to fact get into free trade writings, but when and where do facts plain and unvarnished appear?

American history has during the last century and a fraction, witnessed seven important steps in the low tariff direction. The first was that of 1816, and the dark picture of the havoc it caused was so painted by Henry Clay that it still calls forth the attention of thousands. Step number 2 was the gradual reductions of 1833, and the crash of 1837 shook every financial concern in the Union. Far less severe was the movement of 1846 because a variety of circumstances

here and abroad were in our favor. The fourth step was that of 1857, and if no Republican had ever spoken of it the despairing language of President Buchanan would tell us what it had done. Our fifth, and we blush to own it, was the weakness of the Republican party in cutting down the duties in 1872, but the error was acknowledged and reparation made. Step No. 6 was the tariff of 1894, which Grover Cleveland refused to sign, and for which David B. Hill refused to vote. Last comes the tariff of 1913, which has been largely offset by war conditions, and which President Wilson says must be so altered as to protect our chemical industries.

Is that a creditable record for the advocates of a lower tariff? Far from it, yet they can so use general expressions, so eloquently speak of broadening markets, of world-wide interchanges, and other elusive matters that they can make effective in speeches in many localities. Put two men of the same ability on the same platform, and it is by no means sure that the free trader will not get the larger share of applause. Without saying anything definite, he may give the idea that the progressive spirit of the world is with him, that he represents all that is ennobling and uplifting.

Where is the free trader who states (though he may not deny) that the confederate constitution which clared for free trade declared for the perpetuation of slavery? Is there one who will admit more than he is forced to admit about the undervaluations of the ad valorem system?

We had a few years ago laudations of a tariff commission because it was hoped that we might have one of the most radical type. (Let us be fair to the commissioners who have certainly grown to hate protection much less as they learned more about it). However, to the point-in their most winning manner, in their most persuasive tone the free trade speakers informed us that a tariff commission was, in Germany, upheld by all parties. So it was, but in Germany all parties were for protection, and the

only kind of commission possible was one that would take care of home industry. This was not told us. We were urged to heed Germany's example, but it was a case of "Will you walk into my parlor?' said the spider to the fly."

On the score of facts the free traders have not much to encourage them. But by the force of words they can get up plausible speeches, and it will not do to assume that all the close districts are going to yield protectionist majorities.

EXECUTIVE ABILITY THE MEASURE OF SUCCESS OR FAILURE.

By Hon. Lyman B. Goff.

The constant and steadily increasing business expense is caused not so much by the real cost of doing business, as it is by the way in which it is done. Lack of efficiency is one of the causes in the individual and in the organization. A business organization is seldom composed of great stars. It is a group of men, each a master of one thing. It is team work that counts.

Too many executives try, in a narrow-minded way, to be the whole thing. The real executive deals only with the big problems-the things that experience alone can solve.

How should an executive make a start to correct conditions he already knows are bad? Should he take the thing in hand himself, and, with his limited experience, "cut and try" till he hits an approximate remedy? He may not be broad enough to realize that there never was a problem in business administration-not one

which has not already been met by someone, somewhere, and with the same or similar conditions; and if he went far enough and talked with enough people, he would find a startling similarity in the troubles, methods and conditions of business. Even totally different businesses have much the same kind, character and class of troubles, and if one gets into the real inside, he would find his own problems repeated many times, slightly varied or modified perhaps, but fundamentally the same. With a miscellaneous and detailed experience, he would know where to begin and what to do without it his experimental remedy is pretty sure to be worse than the disease. One may fall into the opposite and perhaps far worse error, and assume that everything is as he thinks it should be, and all the while, defects in his methods and his organization, or the lack of efficiency in himself or those around him, may

so penalize matters that success is impossible.

A fruitful source of error is when an executive begins to delegate authority or responsibility-he tries to hand it over as he would some piece of furniture and usually the wrong man gets it. An incompetent executive in an effort to conceal his own inefficiency avoids the merits of organization and surrounds himself with others as incompetent as himself. The difficulty with many executives is that they do not know how to pick out the best type of men to employ. Men are not like furniture to be bought ready for use as soon as they are put in place, and our outside 1 trained men are lost by executives who don't know the difference between organization and an office full of people.

If these principles apply to the business of individuals and of corporations, they apply with equal force to the business of the nation.

Is there any large business or financial organization that would think of hiring a schoolmaster, who had never had any experience in commercial or financial matters, to take charge of their business-one who had never handled men or had any experience in selecting men for specific duties? But that is just what this nation has done.

Does anyone suppose that the Standard Oil Company, the Bethlehem Steel, the United States Steel, the Carnegie or the Frick industries, would not have gone to smash long ago unless they had had brainy men

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Nearly every man, under Republican and Democratic Presidents, was selected for his ability-not one of them selected for having made political speeches in the interest of a candidate for office. And their names, so well known to us of ripe age, will go down to posterity as the bright minds of their age. The present ones will be remembered for their incompetency, for having their positions through favoritism, relationship, and mainly for having been, as Mr. Platt is remembered, "me too," a mere echo, or rubber stamp.

SENATE DYESTUFFS BILL.

By William E. Brigham.

Congress at last is striking its tar-. American chemical industry die and will accept the substance of protection while bitterly inveighing against its shadow.

iff stride. The way has been hard and slow, but one result of the long and patient hearings and conferences by the Senate Committee on Finance has been a favorable report on the dyestuffs bill concurred in by every member of both parties. This is not tariff legislation, in the strict sense of the term, although it was when it left the House. That body proposed new and really protective rates of duty upon the chemicals enumerated in the Longworth bill and the Senate has returned to the rates in the existing Underwood law. But the House bill provided for a licensing system and the Senate has eliminated that and substituted an embargo upon all foreign dyes, except such as the Tariff Commission may certify to be unobtainable in this country. This system will prevail for three years, when it may be presumed both that the dye industry will have got measurably upon its feet and, also, a Republican Congress will be able to protect the chemical industry along more conventional lines. The Democrats in the present instance were willing to whip the devil around the stump as they are accustomed to do in shipping matters-and to waive their traditional objection to the principle of protection so long as the same thing could be accomplished by another device. The whole incident has its amusing and significant side as demonstrating that the Democratic partisans do not dare let the

PREPARING FOR A GENERAL SALES

TAX.

It is expected at this writing that the dyestuffs bill will be worked. through the Senate during the pauses in the debate on the peace treaty and that the changes made by the Senate will be accepted by the House. In fact, Chairman Fordney and his associates of the Committee on Ways and Means did not like the licensing feature, although they voted for it, and Mr. Fordney had hoped that the Senate would take up with his antidumping bill which, he believed, would render licenses unnecessary. But the Senate as at present constituted cannot turn many tariff wheels, and if the dyestuffs bill gets through, along with the half dozen others covering specific industries, Congress will have accomplished all that is practicable at this session. The other bills relate to laboratory glass, etc., magnesite, pearl buttons, tungsten ore and zinc, all of which of course have passed the House. It is possible that the Democrats, under the leadership of Senator Thomas of Colorado, will try to attach to one of these measures a rider providing for the imposition of a general sales tax. Such a move would be unfortunate and unwise for several reasons. First, it would seriously endanger whatever piece of legislation

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